Who Is This For?
The RTX 5080 targets the high-end gamer and content creator who wants flagship-class performance without the RTX 5090’s extreme price and power requirements. Ideal for:
- 4K gaming at high refresh rates: comfortably pushes 120+ fps in most titles
- AI inference and small model fine-tuning: 16 GB handles 7B-13B parameter models well
- Video editing and streaming: NVENC encoder handles 4K H.265 without breaking a sweat
If you’re training large language models or working with datasets that exceed 16 GB VRAM, step up to the RTX 5090.
Benchmarks
| Game / Workload | RTX 5080 | RTX 5090 | vs. 5090 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cyberpunk 2077 (4K Ultra, DLSS Quality) | 148 fps | 185 fps | 80% |
| Stable Diffusion XL (512x512, 50 steps) | 5.1s | 3.2s | 63% |
| Blender BMW (CUDA) | 29s | 18s | 62% |
| LLM Inference (Llama 3 8B, 4-bit) | 85 tok/s | 110 tok/s | 77% |
Power and Thermals
At 360W, the RTX 5080 is far more practical to cool and power than its bigger sibling. A quality 750W PSU handles it comfortably. Expect 72°C under sustained gaming loads with the Founders Edition cooler.
The Bottom Line
For most people building a high-end PC, the RTX 5080 is the card to get. It offers the Blackwell architecture’s full feature set (DLSS 4, AV1 encode/decode, improved ray tracing) at a price that doesn’t require a second mortgage. The RTX 5090 only makes sense if you specifically need 32 GB VRAM.